My journey through King’s Epic Fantasy Series was not a straightforward one
Note: I first wrote this article back in April 2024 over on Medium.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
With those words the journey is begun.
Interrogation
When I write reviews, I always to take some time to find my way ‘in.’ What angle will I approach from? What interesting connection can I make between the art and my experience of it? This is the hardest part of writing for me; the beginning.
Trying to find my ‘in’ to writing a retrospective of this monumental series — both in terms of its impact and legacy on Stephen King’s career and my own life — was proving tricky. How to approach something this massive? How can I convey what this series means to me?
The answer is obvious. My experience with this series is a journey, much like the pilgrimage of Roland Deschain, the protagonist of The Dark Tower. And so, I’m approaching it the same way he approaches his Dark Tower. One step at a time, and from the beginning, if it please ya.
Initiation
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed," is one mighty fine opening line. Seventeen-year-old me certainly thought so. It's a simple, striking image and straight away has the reader asking questions. Who is the gunslinger? Who is the man in black? Why is the gunslinger following him?
It's a hook to put others to shame, and for me, it worked.
At seventeen, I was already more than familiar with Sai King, as Roland would call him. To say that I don't think I would be the person I am today if my dad hadn't given me a copy of The Shining for Christmas three years earlier is not an understatement. I will forever consider myself one of the 'lucky ones' to have my brain chemistry so intrinsically altered by writing of such quality during this formative time in my life.
It was then with great enthusiasm that I leaped into King's fantasy series, The Dark Tower. I didn't know what I was getting into. I figured - Hey, I like fantasy and I like Stephen King; this should be great!
If you've read The Gunslinger - the first volume in the series - you probably have a good grasp of how totally knocked off-course I was by this book. This didn't read anything like King's other novels, nor like any other fantasy series I'd read before.
The book was disturbing, not simply in terms of content (although, that too - there's a massacre early on that, very simply, does not make for pleasant reading), but in terms of atmosphere. The novel is disjointed, jumping across timelines and referencing events far beyond the reader's ken. There's no humour. There's no relatable everyman character. If you didn't vibe with Roland - and there's a fair chance you wouldn't - you were going to have a hard time finding your way 'in.'
I finished the book with far, far more questions than I had starting it, but also, I had this nagging feeling that so did Stephen King.
Let's get one thing straight - the writing here is exemplary. I've read The Gunslinger several times now, and the more I do, the more I appreciate it. The set pieces and imagery and details of the world King created are captivating, but the story is distinctly jarring, confusing even, especially if you happen to be a young Stephen King fan, used to his regular rhythms of writing, and underexposed to some of the grittier elements of fiction for grown-ups.
I also got the impression that King didn't seem quite sure of himself with this one. The story piles question on top of question, rarely giving solid answers, and had a kind of 'making-it-up-as-he-went-along' feel.
That wonderful opening line had done wonders - pulling me through a strange and off-putting story - but it wasn't enough to make me want to keep going with the series. No, that came from how horrible only having the first book and none of the sequels looked on my bookshelf.
So, I read volumes two and three and then I stopped.
Fate (or 'ka' as Roland would call it) had turned me away from my Dark Tower. There were several factors in this - the primary one being that I became a student at university. We'll not get into it, but the reading and writing community here in Ireland slants heavily away from true genre fiction.
For years I felt like unless I was reading the classics, or the latest in literary fiction, I was missing out. It took me a while to realise what a load of rubbish this all was, and during this time, my love of fantasy - and of reading - diminished.
Inquiry
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t even mentioned what the Dark Tower series is about. This has been mostly on purpose, because for a while, I’m not sure even Stephen King knew what the series was about. Initially it appears as a series that blends both fantasy and westerns, but that morphs as King gets a better foothold on the story, becoming more and more idiosyncratic as the series rolls on.
Very generally, The Dark Tower follows Roland Deschain of Gilead, last in a line of gunslingers — gun-toting peacekeepers/mediators — who is on a quest to reach the Dark Tower in a world that has ‘moved on.’ Time is slippery in Roland’s world — which is somehow connected to our world, too. Has it been decades, centuries, or even millennia since the fall of Gilead? How is Roland even alive? What’s the Dark Tower? What do you mean ‘moved on’?
All good questions and ones to which the series doesn’t easily give up answers, partly because King wasn’t interested in giving them to you. Concrete answers and the end to mystery found in them are unimportant to King. For him, it’s all about the journey.
He’s often been criticised for having bad endings. When I first found this out, I was genuinely confused. I think a lot of readers want and expect the endings of their books to be tied in neat little bows. King has never been like this — to me it’s part of his appeal.
His endings are messy. They aren’t happy — not because he’s a horror writer — but because in real life, endings aren’t happy. They can be disappointing. They can make you wish things had been different. King has always been an incredibly authentic writer — keen on capturing both the ugliness and joy of life. Were he to twist his stories so they end as conveniently as possible, he wouldn’t be being true to himself, or to what makes him a great writer in the first place.
And if, back when he was only two or three books into the series, you forced him to give you the answers to those questions you asked earlier, they wouldn’t have been satisfying. He would’ve been making them up for you, instead of discovering them for himself.
King took twenty-two years to finish The Dark Tower. Sure, George R.R. Martin puts that number to shame when it comes to A Song of Ice and Fire (Twenty-seven years and counting!), but this is Stephen King we’re talking about. The man releases a book a year — sometimes two. So, what was he doing? Five or six years would go by between books, before he released the final three in a span of eleven months.
Well, it might sound a bit ‘woo-woo’, but I think it’s apparent that King was struggling to ‘hear’ the story. He’s not a writer to force a story to bend to his will; he wants to unearth it as he goes. So, when the well of inspiration dries up and other stories were calling to him, what other choice did he have? He went and wrote other books.
The amazing thing though, is that even when King was writing other books, he never really stopped writing about the Dark Tower.
Insomnia
So, college, for all of its positives, did a number on me. I lost my way, floundering for years over what sort of writer I wanted to be and what sort of books I thought I should be reading. I’m sure I’ll write about all this someday, but this point is that I once again found my Path of the Beam — that metaphysical roadway that guides Roland to the Tower and guided me back to my love of fantasy and science-fiction.
I never totally left King behind, though. In between forcing myself through Jane Eyre or whatever ‘modern literary classic’ was in vogue at the time, I always found a little time for King, thanks in no small part to good old dad, who never stopped getting me his books for Christmases and birthdays once my love for The King of Horror became apparent.
I was staying away from the Dark Tower, though. It seemed… unbroachable. Years had passed since I’d dropped the series, and had I even liked it? No, it was best to stick to King as I knew him best.
Then I read Insomnia.
What on the surface was a classic standalone King novel about an old man who suddenly found himself not being able to sleep was actually masquerading as a Dark Tower novel. It was, at times, a bafflingly weird story, heavily featuring little invisible bald doctors from another plane of existence responsible for cutting people’s ‘lifeline’ when it’s time for them to die, among many other strange things.
When one of the little bald doctors mentioned Roland the Gunslinger, my eyes nearly fell out of my head. What the hell? The reference made me curious — were some of his other novels connected to the Dark Tower? Then I read Hearts In Atlantis, and there Roland was again, being referenced by a man named Ted — a man with psychic powers, sort of like Danny in The Shining… The idea that all of this was bigger than I thought was captivating…
So I started reading the series again. From the beginning. This time, I felt like I had a much greater appreciation for what King was trying to do here. He wasn’t trying to be like any of the fantasy novels I’d read before. He wasn’t trying to mould the series to his whims. It was weird and disturbing and, the more I leaned in, the more I saw how only King could write something like this. I was dazzled by his sheer confidence — of jumping headfirst into something of such a massive scope with no plan.
I was hesitant entering volume four — Wizard and Glass. It didn’t take long for my fears to be assuaged. After a brief stop in the world of King’s novel The Stand, Roland finally gives his friends (more on them later) some answers as to who he really is, and what he’s looking for at The Dark Tower. Between Roland opening up and my discovery that King was writing stories in a way that felt truly unprecedented, I was committed. I was in it for the long haul.
My only real hurdle was the damn book covers were changing! The spines of my editions fit together to form a lovely image but because there was a movie adaptation coming out soon, the books were getting a slightly new look that changed only one thing — the spines.
I owned the first five volumes, and suddenly, I couldn’t find volumes six or seven to match! None of my local bookshops had them anymore, nor could I be sure that if I ordered them online, I would receive the right versions.
One day my mum and dad were taking a trip to Dublin. There’s a wonderful bookshop there called Chapters that has a simply huge sci-fi/fantasy section — compared to anything we had in Galway, anyway — so I asked them if they could take a look around, and see if they could find the right editions of the books…
They found them. Volumes six and seven, with the spines to match my editions. The last copies left in the shop. They purchased them for me and took them home, where they sat on my shelf, waiting to be read just as soon as I got around to finishing book five and whatever book I would read afterwards to cleanse my literary palette — I always read something new in between books of a series to keep things feeling fresh. I devoured volume six — Song of Susannah. It wouldn’t be long now, until I get around to volume seven, I thought.
Then my mum died, and that seventh volume— the final one — sat on my shelf for five years, unread.
Introductions
One of the largest appeals of The Dark Tower is undoubtedly Roland Deschain himself. He's unemotional, unimaginative, and single-minded. He's loyal, to an extent, but his desire to reach the Dark Tower comes first. Everyone else - even those he loves - comes second. He's not nice. He's not overly intelligent. He's just fast with a gun and never willing to give up.
That's his baseline, but naturally enough, Roland is pushed to change by the events of the story, mainly by meeting Jake, Eddie, and Susannah. This trio is drawn to Roland's world from New York City in our world - or at least a version of our world - but all from different times. Jake's a boy from the 70's, Eddie's a heroin addict from the 80's and Susannah is the heir to small fortune from the 60's.
Roland's change is slow. The main emotional question of the series is whether Roland will open his heart to love - if he'll ever put something or somebody before his quest for the Dark Tower. Roland, therefore, is quite a static character. We experience the catharsis of change instead through Jake, Eddie, and Susannah. Watching them adapt to Roland's world and quest is a huge part of the fun of this series. It's also an aspect of the story that doesn't fully come to the fore until volume two - just another reason why volume one can be so alienating.
I'm hesitant to give too much away about these characters' journeys, but I will say that Eddie Dean is my favourite Stephen King character of all time. Maybe even in fiction. They're all great, though. Roland's relationship with Jake is particularly excellent. Jake is initially nothing but a burden to Roland.
But could he become like a son to him? Could Jake learn to love the man who took him from his safe life in New York City into a dying world filled with horrors no boy should ever be exposed to? Just thinking about Roland and his relationships with Jake is making me excited to read the series again, whenever that may be.
Of course, King's strength has always been his character work. His ability to jump between points of view and integrate so much specific detail from a character's life and backstory into the present is astounding. Maybe it's the fact that Roland was as much of a mystery to King as he was to us that made that first book so difficult for me initially. Regardless, King's development of these characters over seven books is nothing short of astounding.
This 'learning-as-he-went' approach is also what makes the series special. King only grows more confident in his storytelling as the novels progress. It's fun to experience the writer's evolution over the years, but even more fun is how King works this evolution into the narrative itself.
I won't be giving away any spoilers here - I don't want to rob you of some tremendous surprises down the line in the series - but The Dark Tower isn't just a fantasy tale about a gunslinger on a quest. It's tale about storytelling itself - about the magic of writing, and sometimes the grief that can come with it.
Naysayers like to deride King's prolific output as proof that he couldn't be putting much effort into his novels. He's just 'pumping them out' after all. I can only imagine that the people who say these things have never written a book themselves - or certainly haven't been writing them for fifty years. Writing isn't easy. To do what King does doesn't just require talent. It requires a tremendous amount of work and sacrifice.
He wouldn't be the icon he is today if he wasn't the kind of writer to throw himself into a series like this before he was ready while also having the perseverance to see it through to the end. A piece of advice that's always given to new writers: finish your damn stories. King is living proof that the advice is sound. Finish your stories. Even if it takes you twenty-two years.
Indecision
I had been turned away from the Tower yet again. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to write in-depth about my mum's death to cancer - not directly, anyway - but I know that here isn't the place for it, so I'll keep it brief. All you need to know is that she was only fifty-four, she loved me and my sister more than anything, and the feeling was mutual.
Oh, and one time, back when I was first thinking about studying writing in college but before I'd worked up the courage to express this to my parents, my mum told me that I should write for The Simpsons because I loved that show so much. Needless to say, that was a vote of confidence when I really needed it. It's like she knew I wanted to be a writer before I did, which is probably true.
That's a long way of saying you probably wouldn't be reading this if it wasn't for my mum. Anyway, let me tell you from experience that it is very hard to get back into your hobbies in the weeks and months after the death of a loved one. Every moment of joy is tainted by the feeling that you should probably be an inconsolable wreck right now instead of daring to enjoy yourself. It's been years and sometimes I still feel like that.
But as Roland would say, ka is a wheel, and eventually I wound up at a place where I was reading the books I love again, with one notable exception. You see, there was a book on my shelf that was, technically, the last one that my mum ever got me. I couldn't just start into it without a care.
What if I didn't like it? The last books in a series can often be divisive. No writer will ever craft an ending that everybody loves. What if I fell into the group that loved the series but hated book seven - a group that certainly exists. After all, this is Stephen King we're talking about, and apparently people find his endings to be weak…
But the longer the book gathered dust, the more significance my mind attributed to it until eventually, in April 2023, I reached a tipping point. I would read volume seven, but I wasn't just going to jump back into the series from where I'd left off.
No, for the third time, I would be starting from the beginning, this time incorporating every Stephen King novel and short story that significantly tied into The Dark Tower series as I went.
I would make that final novel mean something. I would make it worthy to be a final gift from my mother by making it the culmination and celebration of my favourite author's work. Even if I didn't like it, this would be a journey. And from experience, I knew it would be a fun one.
(If you're curious, the list of relevant stories amounted to fourteen novels, six novellas, and three short stories… you can find the list here)
Intersection
I'm not going to spoil the ending for The Dark Tower for you. You deserve to go on that journey for yourself, to experience all the twists and turns first-hand, to form your own opinions. Maybe after all this time you're begging for me to tell you what lies at the top of the Dark Tower. I will do no such thing. Go read the books and find out for yourself. Don't look it up online. Make it mean something to you.
At the very least hold out for the upcoming television adaptation from Mike Flanagan, a man who has helmed adaptions of King's other novels, Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game, as well as the upcoming The Life of Chuck, based on a recent King novella. That it will be worth watching I have little doubt. (Unlike the 2017 movie that threatened to ruin the aesthetic pleasure of my bookshelf…)
What can I tell you then? I can tell you that I cried at the end. I can tell you that I struggled read any other books in the days after I finished because my head was so a-swirl with thoughts about the Dark Tower.
I can tell you that I think the ending was perfect and the journey to the end of that final book was even better. I can tell you that not everything gets explained. I can you tell that this is better than the alternative.
I can tell you that as final gift from my mum, I couldn't have asked for more. Reading it was one of those book experiences that stay with you forever. In a very real sense, this is a gift that will keep on giving.
When I had only a hundred pages or so left in volume seven, I decided that I would read it all in one sitting. Fully immersing myself in a book by getting into a deep state of flow is something I love to do when I'm getting to the end of a book I'm loving. Forgetting the real world even exists is one of the things that make a good book so like magic.
So, I took myself to a café and got to reading. Unfortunately, the café was getting noisy, so I cut my losses and chose to return home, only a few minutes away. I closed my book and saw an old man sitting at the table next to me. He was smiling.
'That's a good book,' he said, pointing at my copy of volume seven.
I laughed. 'You've read this?' Here was a man older than King himself; not typically the sort of person you expect to be a big fantasy reader - and a healthy reminder to check your biases.
He nodded. 'Good book.'
His English wasn't great (I'm living in Barcelona until the middle of summer), so we left off there, but I walked home in a daze. So rarely has anyone ever commented on a book I was reading in public, and here an old man made a connection with me over my favourite series, and me with a bare fifty pages left.
It made me wonder about what kind of journey this man had with The Dark Tower. Clearly, the series stuck with him. When did he read it? When it came out? Last year? I don't have many people to talk with about The Dark Tower with in real life, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to sit down and natter about Stephen King with him until the café closed.
Maybe that would've made for a better ending. Maybe he would've been able to give me just the right insight to tie this whole piece together. I'll never know about his journey, which is a shame. He's but a small piece of the ending of mine. A small, but important piece.
He and I may have taken different paths to the Dark Tower, but our separate journeys were nonetheless a unifying force. Stories are powerful like that. They are things of connection, and in a world that feels more divisive that ever, it's good to be reminded about the simple power of a good story.
Invitation
And so, I come to the end of my journey. Time isn’t as slippery in our world as it is in Roland’s, so I can say with reasonable confidence that completing The Dark Tower took me ten years. From a distance, that seems nothing short of ludicrous, but I will be forever grateful for the journey, and forever grateful to be lucky enough to have such a wonderful series that I will always associate with my mum.
The one thing I know for certain is that my next read-through won’t take me ten years to finish. It might even start sooner than I think. The power of that opening line still has its hook in me, it seems. How long can I resist?
How long can you?
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Thanks for reading my Conclave review. If you liked it, consider checking out my wishlist or buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien or below.
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